An Afternoon in Summer

By Kathy Giuffre

Kathy Giuffre wants to escape from her stressful life working full-time and raising two young children alone. When a new boyfriend agrees to join her and her sons for a year on a tropical island, she takes a sabbatical from work and starts packing. Then at the last minute he announces he isn’t coming. In a captivating style, Giuffre tells what happened when she finds herself alone with her boys on a tiny speck in the South Pacific Ocean. She knows no one. The house she’s been promised is unlivable, and almost every other outsider is on a ten-day package tour. Her unlikely savior is Emily, an 82-year-old Maori woman with a rambling white house on the edge of the ocean, which two women share with the ghosts of Emily’s ancestors, two callous missionaries and, briefly, a bizarre couple from Eastern Europe. As time passes, Kathy is seduced by the island and its way of life. An afternoon in summer is an inspirational story about having the courage to search for something better from life and ultimately finding it.